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US says Taiwan needs to become a hornet nest of drones
Taiwan needs a “hornet’s nest” of drones to help deter conflict and provide security, says the top United States ?diplomat to the self-governing island that China claims as part of its territory. Speaking at a forum on drones in the central city of Taichung, Raymond Greene, director of the American Institute in ?Taiwan and the de facto US ambassador, said on Thursday that drones represented a “game-changing opportunity” to enhance Taiwan’s security and reinforce peace in the broader region. The US, Taiwan’s most important international backer and arms supplier despite their lack of formal diplomatic ties, has strongly supported the government’s military ?modernisation plan and increased defe… |
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Why AI firm is taking on Trump administration
A row is simmering between the United States government and Anthropic, one of the tech companies that develops artificial intelligence (AI) tools for defence and civilian uses. According to recent reports, Anthropic’s Claude software was used in a US military operation, which resulted in the abduction of Venezuelan President Nicholas Maduro in January this year. US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has given the company until Friday to loosen its rules about how its AI tools can be used by the Pentagon, or risk losing its government contract, The Associated Press and Reuters news agencies reported on Tuesday, quoting unnamed sources. But Anthropic is refusing to back down over safeguards which … |
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Stanford Godmother of AI Launches Spatial Intelligence MasterClass
MasterClass, the personalized learning platform, has announced the launch of Dr. Fei-Fei Li: AI’s Future – and Yours, a class that covers the current state of AI development, its real-world applications and the role individuals can play in influencing how the technology evolves. Known as the “Godmother of AI,” Li is a Stanford professor, cofounder and CEO of World Labs and founding director of Stanford’s Human-Centered AI Institute. Her foundational research on ImageNet helped spark the deep learning revolution behind every AI product in use today. The class is available now on MasterClass, where members have unlimited access to 200+ instructors with an annual membership. The class begins wh… |
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Father grieves for his teen daughter who died in devastating flood
18-year-old Chloe Childress was one of the 27 kids and staff who lost their lives as a result of the floods that occurred at Camp Mystic in the previous summer. According to a recent article in New York Magazine, hChloe's father identified her battered body. She was the 18-year-old Camp Mystic counselor who was killed in the tragic flood last year. The Guadalupe River rose 20 feet in three hours due to the torrential rains that swept over Central Texas that morning on July 4th. More than 130 individuals lost their lives as the catastrophic flood destroyed structures and devastated the area. Following the tragic murders of 25 kids and two counselors, including Chloe, the century-old Christian… |
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Humanity Has Gone Over the Edge
Halenews Editorial Humanity has just gone over the edge of a cliff, and there may be no way back. Picture eight billion people in free fall and you begin to grasp the scale of what is now in motion. The only reason this does not feel urgent is because the catastrophe has not yet interrupted daily life. Nuclear war is no longer a distant Cold War nightmare. Reckless politics, fragile alliances, and leaders who talk about force the way bored men talk about dares have made it real again. If this goes wrong—and it can—the lights do not flicker. They go out. Satellites die. GPS disappears. Phones become paperweights. Banks freeze. Hospitals improvise. The internet, games, streaming, and social li… |
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Texas homeowner charged with murder after killing armed intruder
The story begins in Texas, a state long associated with strong protections for gun owners and expansive interpretations of self-defense. According to reports, a homeowner confronted an armed intruder inside his residence. Shots were fired, and the intruder was killed. What might seem, at first glance, like a textbook case of “castle doctrine”—the legal principle that allows homeowners to use deadly force against unlawful entry—quickly became more complicated. Prosecutors filed murder charges against the homeowner, arguing that the circumstances did not justify lethal force. The decision shocked many Texans, who assumed the law would shield the homeowner. It also sparked outrage among gun rig… |
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California named the most air polluted state in US
The 27th annual “State of the Air” study revealed that almost half of kids in the US are exposed to harmful levels of air pollution. That includes 7 million youngsters in California, and more than eight in 10 individuals live in counties with bad air. The research rated the air quality of counties with data from 2022 to 2024 on ground-level ozone pollution, popularly known as smog, and particle pollution, generally known as soot. Los Angeles-Long Beach was once again the most ozone-polluted metropolis in the nation. Bakersfield was the most contaminated for yearly particle pollution, although the area continued to improve in 2026 report. Ground-level ozone pollution, or smog, is a potent res… |
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A timeline of British royal sagas and scandals down the decades
Former British prince Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, brother of the United Kingdom’s King Charles II, was released by police on Thursday after being arrested and held for several hours on suspicion of misconduct in public office over his links to convicted late American sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Mountbatten-Windsor, who turned 66 the day of his arrest, is the first British royal in more than 350 years to be arrested and held in police custody – the last one was King Charles I, who was arrested by parliamentary forces in 1647 and put on trial for high treason. His princely title was revoked last year over his links to Epstein and allegations that the two men sexually abused Virginia Giuffre … |
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How the fight for public land around Los Angeles hinges on saving one parcel at a time
Over the last year, activists have organized droves of people across the United States to protest and petition Congress over concerns that the Trump administration will sell off our most beloved outdoor spaces. We’ve worried about general threats to public lands, such as whether the 700,000-acre Angeles National Forest or the 150,000-acre Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area will remain pristine protected landscapes. We’ve also seen specific examples of what activists have cautioned could happen: a large mining operation that could open just outside Joshua Tree National Park and a large housing development proposed at the border of Yosemite National Park. And although that attenti… |
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Trump and JD Vance vilify lawless Supreme Court justices over tariff ruling
United States President Donald Trump and his vice president, JD Vance, have launched personal attacks on the justices of the US Supreme Court and their families, after the country’s top court struck down trade tariffs imposed by the White House. In a 45-minute address to reporters at the White House, the US president heaped criticism on the six justices who ruled against his signature tariff policy in the 6-3 decision by the court on Friday, including Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett, whom Trump appointed to the court during his first term. “I think it’s an embarrassment to their families, you wanna know the truth, the two of them,” Trump said, referring to Justices Gorsuch and Barrett. “I… |
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Rebecca Grossman murdered 2 boys when she sped through a crosswalk
This is read by an automated voice. Please report any issues or inconsistencies here. Rebecca Grossman murdered two young brothers when she sped through a Westlake Village crosswalk, a jury found two years ago. Now, a state appeals court has upheld that verdict. Grossman, the co-founder of the Grossman Burn Foundation, is serving 15 years to life in state prison for the second-degree murders of 11-year-old Mark Iskander and 8-year-old Jacob Iskander. On Tuesday, the California 2nd District Court of Appeal upheld the Feb. 23, 2024, conviction of the wife of renowned surgeon Peter Grossman. Rebecca Grossman’s six-week trial was filled with dramatic testimony and evidence that she struck the bo… |
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The exodus of California tech billionaires from the Golden State to Florida Gold Coast
This is read by an automated voice. Please report any issues or inconsistencies here. MIAMI and PALM BEACH, Fla. — Last December, a large coterie of Silicon Valley billionaires descended upon Miami to attend Art Basel, the ritzy, contemporary art fair that marks the end of the moneyed set’s yearly social calendar. Much of the buzz surrounded the spectacle of Google co-founder Sergey Brin, among the world’s richest men, docking his 466-foot, $450-million yacht, the Dragonfly, in Biscayne Bay while he stepped ashore to view the art installations. But the chatter pivoted quickly among a contingent of a dozen California billionaires. Weeks earlier a new ballot measure — backed by the SEIU-United… |
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A NATION THAT KILLS ITS OWN
Americans kill their citizens with guns at a rate no other developed nation would accept. Long ago, we should have settled the debate and silenced opposition. Instead, it became mere background noise. Twenty-six children in one classroom, six-year-olds, were slaughtered, shot to death while hiding from a gunman. There was no battlefield, no riot, no civil war. There was only a young man with a gun in a country that had come to accept death as an inevitable risk. As a nation, many of us declared “never again,” yet Americans have consistently overlooked the lives of children in favor of guns, barroom cowboys, road rage, bloodshed, and death. This preference has fostered an environment where th… |
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Lost in the Flood they Found Each Other Years Later
Human Interest They met the way people used to meet before algorithms pretended to know our hearts better than we did—by proximity and boredom and youth. Two teenagers in New Orleans, same neighborhood, different schools, running into each other at a corner store that smelled like dust and sugar and summer. There was nothing cinematic about it at first. He made her laugh. She remembered what he ordered every time. They walked streets that would later be mapped by disaster, unaware they were standing on a fault line between before and after. They dated for a year. Long enough to feel permanent. Short enough to believe permanence was guaranteed. Then, in August 2005, the city broke open. When … |
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SoCal school psychologist thought he was meeting a 13 year old but it was a sting
This is read by an automated voice. Please report any issues or inconsistencies here. A Riverside County school psychologist thought he had arranged a meeting with a 13-year-old, authorities say, but he walked into a sting operation. He now faces three charges related to child sex crimes. Paul Ryan Coleman, 46, of Yucaipa was arrested Tuesday following a three-month investigation by county authorities. Coleman, a licensed school psychologist at the Nuview Union School District, planned to meet up with someone he believed was a 13-year-old child but who was actually an undercover investigator, the county district attorney’s office said in a statement. He had exchanged hundreds of sexually exp… |
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A series of mistakes caused a tragic fire in Hong Kong
An independent committee looking into the origin of Hong Kong's worst fire in decades heard testimony on Thursday about how a number of mistakes led to the 2025 inferno that destroyed seven buildings and killed 168 people. The hearings in the case began. Since the fire destroyed the close-knit neighborhood of Wang Fuk Court in November 2025, former inhabitants and family members of the dead have been waiting for answers. The community was home to thousands of individuals in the suburban area of Tai Po. Victor Dawes, the chief lawyer for the committee, stated in his opening remarks that the most likely cause of the fire was cigarettes that ignited other things on fire on a platform in an air … |
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Permission To Enter America Can Vanish Mid Flight
The story, at first glance, is almost too ordinary to provoke alarm. A passenger boards a commercial flight, a child in tow, tickets purchased, itinerary confirmed, the quiet contract of modern travel intact. There is an implicit promise embedded in that exchange—not written in the fine print, but understood by millions who step onto aircraft each day—that movement, once begun, will be completed. Not without delay, perhaps, not without inconvenience, but with continuity. What occurred instead was rupture. Somewhere between departure and destination, the passenger ceased to be a traveler and became a problem. Delta Air Lines, in its response, did what corporations have trained themselves to d… |
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The fourteen-Year-Old American Boy Who Invented Television
I was fourteen, and most days I smelled like dirt, grease, and hay. That’s what happens when you grow up on a farm in Idaho—you work, you sweat, you get yelled at for tracking mud into the kitchen. My family expected me to plow fields, not invent anything. But I had a habit of thinking while my hands were busy, and that habit changed the world. The tractor was waiting that afternoon, already hot from the sun. I climbed on, gripped the wheel, and started across the field. The job was simple: drive straight, turn, line up, cut another row. Over and over. Mary Elaine was standing in the field watching me like she had nothing better to do. She was my girlfriend, though she’d never admit it out l… |
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Why Are Cereal Boxes Only Half Full
Consumer Investigative The first time you notice it, you assume you’re imagining things. You open a familiar cereal box — the same brand you’ve bought since childhood — and it feels oddly light. You shake it. You peer inside. Half the box is empty. You tell yourself it must be settling. That’s what we’ve been trained to think. Gravity, transport, crumbs falling into gaps. Physics, not profit. But physics doesn’t explain why the box itself hasn’t gotten any smaller. This is not an accident. It is a business strategy, and it has a name: shrinkflation. Companies quietly reduce the amount of product while keeping the packaging, branding, and price largely the same. The goal is simple: preserve p… |
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Four victims dead after stabbing attack in Washington State
A 32-year-old man in the United States has stabbed four people to death outside a home on the Key Peninsula, northwest of Tacoma, in Washington state. The suspect was later shot and killed by a Pierce County sheriff’s deputy. The attack unfolded on Tuesday morning. Deputies from the Pierce County Sheriff’s Office were dispatched at about 8:41am local time (16:41 GMT) following reports that the suspect had violated a no-contact order, according to The Associated Press. Officers obtained a copy of the no-contact order, but found it was not yet valid because it had not been served against the suspect. They left to deliver the order in person. But while officers were in transit, the 32-year-old … |